The Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival And Some Rumination on Southern Identity and Hipsters (Also Gumbo)

The Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival is a 30 year old and inexplicably ginormous festival, held smack-dab out in the swamps outside New Orleans. It is devoted (startlingly enough) to strawberries, strawberry flavored foods, swamp-type music, and the many exciting ways one might combine booze and the little red fruit into one exciting package. The clientele is, well, rural Louisiana.

Living in New Orleans and attending Tulane - a school whose student body is made up mostly of people from Long Island with fake tans and extremely white teeth - it's easy to forget that one resides in the South.

The South where people wear overalls un-ironically, baseball caps with Harley Davidson insignia on them, and purchase things like Confederate flag string bikinis. That variety of South. A King and a Queen of the Strawberry Festival are always appointed, ostensibly to promote healthy eating. Mostly to wear tiaras. There's a strawberry eating contest which I think I could have showed pretty well in, but we missed it.

My friends are hipsters and I am a hipster in a hipster tribe - we frequent hipster bars and go to hipster shows and sit around being Ironic Hipsters on campus, congratulating ourselves on how avant garde we are. Such is my lot, I've made my peace with it. But the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival functioned as a very needed reminder that an entire universe of totally unironic human beings is out there, people who really could not give two shits about noise music or the state of molecular gastronomy in Portugal or the best place one might acquire rare dub records from the late 1960's. And I am sort of glad that they exist.



There were chocolate covered strawberries everywhere at the festival, and it seemed like people from miles and miles away had flocked here to sell their particular variant on the theme. The chocolate covered strawberry is ultimately one of mankind's better culinary ideas. There was also strawberry, tutti-frutti, and cotton candy flavored popcorn on sale. Which tasted aggressively chemical, but perhaps you're into that kind of thing.



Be it known that I am Southern, was born in Florida (this mostly counts) and am descended from people from Louisiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina. That I can mock the South and associated people because such materials are what I am sprung from, that (really) any superiority complex I might have needs to be amended by reality. People shall have their ATV's and tremendous smokers, and I will try to judge them minimally. (My father has a very large BBQ smoker in the backyard which probably makes him think of the Smokie mountains and addresses some primal need within his soul. We can never totally escape ourselves). Is the disclaimer I am adding here.



We sampled Italian Jambalaya from these nice people with their big old rice pot, and it was awfully good.



The usual stuff prepared with Italian sausage, sun dried tomato, mushrooms and artichoke hearts, just right. New Orleans has a strong Italian tradition and such melding of cuisine is pretty much standard issue: more power to them.



This gumbo was only acceptable. Had a nice dense flavor with lots of okra but there just wasn't enough stuff in it: seafood gumbo needs to have more going on then just some anemic shrimp.

Strawberry daiquiris were sweet and highly rum-infused. Everyone was drinking them out of what appeared to be buckets. It was hot outside. I had some delicious grilled corn with some cajun seasoning on it and it stuck in my teeth for a day but I didn't mind. There was an unimpressive prime-rib sandwich and some satisfying strawberry shortcake. No one could summon up the bravery required for the deep-fried strawberries. Charbroiled oysters were deemed uniquely tempting but ultimately unwise in 80 degree and humid weather. This was how it went.


Someone is making a mint off these.

Strawberry wine is promoted heavily at the Strawberry Festival and apparently tastes satanically evil, or that is what I figured out from hearing people talk about it. I guess you can draw your own conclusions.



There was quite a bit of music of the zydeco sort, played by big guys with beards and a Harley Davidson themed collective uniform. It was hot outside.



These two had it figured out.

As we left the festival, we walked down the road to where we had parked our car, a good half mile or so from the center of town and the center of activity. Strawberry stands had been set up all along this path, and we all determined we didn't want to carry a large flat of strawberries the whole back to the car. One seller assured us that the strawberries further back were disgusting and heinous and that we should buy from him, it was worth carrying his fine and delicious strawberries the whole back to our car.

We ignored him and kept on walking.

"There won't be any strawberries to buy," one member of our group said. She was gently ignored.

We keep on walking. The strawberry vendors slowly begin to peter out. The berries grow more and more anemic looking. The aggrieved member of our party begins to grow visibly distressed - and the car is spotted, and we've bought no strawberries. "Just over there," someone says, "There's someone selling them. Everything is saved." (Growled, a bit).

And we walk over.

"Are those Ponchatoula strawberries?"

"No, ma'am. They grown a parish over, but they just as good." A woman with cut-offs who looks far older then she probably actually is.

"But they're not Ponchatoula!" (Anguished voice).

"No, but they good," the seller insists.

"We'll have to buy them. We won't have bought any strawberries if we don't." (This said with some firmness. No one can say otherwise. Or dares). So we buy them, a big old flat.

And what do you know, we drive about four minutes and there's someone selling PONCHATOULA STRAWBERRIES, a big old sign. The real thing.

"We have to buy another flat!"

We do. The Real Actual Ponchatoula Strawberries are judged to be (in muted, slightly horrified tones) to not be noticeably better then the now disfavored One-County-Over-Berries. It is rather as if an edifice has been toppled. More importantly: there are tons of strawberries in the back seat, there are more berries then can be believed, we will be eating strawberries until we all are dead and no more.

This I do not mind.

I brought strawberries and cereal to lunch every single day this week. And I did not regret it or mind it in the slightest. I could not differentiate between Ponchatoula Strawberries and next parish over impostors. Both were adequately delicious.

The New Orleans Seafood Festival

The New Orleans Seafood Festival is a celebration of the sea critters that we dearly love to devour. Now in its third year, the Fest features food booths from a variety of local restaurants, live music, cooking demonstrations, and other vaguely-seafood themed attractions. The proceeds for the event benefit the Lousiana Hospitality Association. Think that means hotels and whatnot, but I could be wrong.


Oysters on the grill.

It was incredibly, incredibly hot on Saturday, but I worked through the pain to meet my friends at Fulton Square, next door to Harrah's hotel. We nipped in to grab an adult beverage or two, then surveyed the food options (while standing next to a lovely mist-emitting fan).



We just missed renowned local chef Frank Brigsten. He was demonstrating how to cook something or other. I desperately want to visit his restaurant, Brigstens - which is known for its gigantic and reportedly delicious mixed seafood platter.



Drago's restaurant is known almost entirely for its chargrilled oysters, an extremely popular dish in these parts. (As if adding huge amounts of butter, herbs, and breadcrumbs to oysters could be anything but popular). These were pretty good, although the oysters had shriveled a bit under the heat of the flames.



Seafood boudin? Seafood boudin! Boudin is of course Louisiana's rather unusual rice-and-meat filled sausage, usually prepared with pig but occasionally jazzed up seafood. Couldn't decide quite how I felt about this: never have eaten anything quite like it, but the sausage treatment renders seafood a bit dry.



Crab cakes with a spicy remoulade sauce. These were okay: I prefer the chunkier style of crabcake, with less breading and bigger pieces of crab. These had a smooth texture, almost like a pate.



Fish ceviche with lime, onions, and jalapeno. There's about a million different ways to prepare ceviche, and this fishy version hit the spot: nice and tangy, and even better with some crackers crumbled into it. There was also Mexican-style shrimp cocktail on offer, but I didn't partake.


No one had any soft shell crabs! That's tragic, a travesty. Soft shell crabs are in my opinion about as good as it gets vis a vis New Orleans seafood eating, at least on par with elegant puppy-drum preparations and tremendous piles of steaming, vermillion crawdads. We were filled with sorrow.



Speaking of crawdads, this photo was delightful. I want a poster.

Jazzfest Round Two!

We arrived bright and early for another exciting day at Jazzfest. The weather was delightfully overcast (a good thing), and droves of people had emerged from their Bourbon Street hotel rooms to wander onto the fair grounds. Hell, Neil Young was even slated to play (among others). We had even had the foresight to bring along convenient folding chairs to sit in - seasoned Jazzfest vets bring along folding chairs that could be used to colonize deep space, complete with cupholders, snack containers, shade tents and possibly water spritzers. I have never seen so many hats with beer holders on them in my short lifetime.



We were very happy to get back into the food game.



I don't know a whole lot about African food, but I adored this jama-jama, a spicy, slow-cooked and addictive spinach dish from New Orlean's own Bennachin restaurant. Spiked with hot sauce, this was very much up my alley. (I love my greens, if you hadn't guessed from reading this blog).



This was Jamaican chicken with veggies - pretty good and slow cooked in a spicy sauce, although I sure wish it had been jerk chicken. (It's hard to beat jerk chicken).



I also tried out a pink lemonade sno-ball. A sno-ball is as a sno-ball does: they're about the same as the much-beloved Hawaiian shave ice, a sno-cone with an extra fine texture. In New Orleans, sno-balls are often made with condensed milk or other distinctive (and often house-made) syrups and flavorings. Just the thing on a hot day...if you're too much of a wuss to drink daiquiris from 10:00 AM onward. Since the weather's heated up, I've been seeing folks riding their horses on the neutral ground (where the streetcars run) while sipping big-ass travel size daiquiris. Love ya, NOLA, don't ever change.



As eager pork consumers, we were pleased to see these pork cracklings - produced old-school style and fresh, with the skin and a little bit of the fat still on. They were hot and warm, if a little crunchy: some hot sauce and some extra salt helped soften them up. Yum.



This BBQ turkey wing made me very happy: cooked til' falling apart in barbeque sauce and served with porky white beans and cole slaw, this was a delectable exercise in soul food.



This peanut guy was rather magnificently self assured.



We also saw this excellent blues musician, Chris Thomas King, in the Blues tent. A rap/blues pioneer, he's been featured in quite a few films, among them O Brother Where Art Thou, the Soul of a Man, and Ray. Check him out.



These Crocodile Gumboot Dancers from South Africa were compelling. Their routine really made me consider the origins of hip-hop music - all this awesome stompy stuff to the beat of guitar and drum.

What about Neil Young? I'm a big Neil Young fan and have been since a very young age, and I was pretty happy to get a chance to see him. Unfortunately, about five bazillion of my very closest friends had the same idea. Surprisingly for someone who really enjoys crowded Asian countries, I don't like giant crowds at concerts at all - but I was willing to elbow my way through the crowd for a little bit of Neil Young. The man himself duly came on stage and began to rock, with an impressive amount of fervor for a gentleman in his mid sixties who has not, let us say, taken the conservative approach with illicit substances.

I stuck it out for four songs, but gathering storm clouds and the constant nasty glares of the grossly obese people with umbrella hats sitting next to me prompted me to move on. I had to use all my third-world honed Pushing Through Crowds skills to escape the scrum, but they served me well: I managed to make it out of the crush in good time, earning me yet more disapproving stares from the folks I shoved my way by. Hey, they don't apologize for that shit in Beijing and Old Delhi! Get over it!

My instincts were right on: the skies opened up and it began pouring, just as my mom and I began making our way to the taxi stand. Out came the dorky ponchos and the umbrellas, but those are little protection against the monsoon-like power of New Orleans spring downpours: we was soaked. The taxi man harrumphed a bit at us for soaking his seats, but we got to talking and he ended up being very friendly, as most New Orleanians are in most situations, except for when they are mugging you.

Jazzfest was a lot of fun and I see why it is so endlessly famous, although I am going to have to get over my aversion to masses of large sweaty people who like to stand in front of me before I may truly enjoy it. The food, certainly, is delicious and tremendously fun to work through - I know I will return to try everything I didn't get a chance to sample this go-round.

Jazzfest Food!!

The weekend I finished up at Tulane and headed home to Sacramento, I got to go to Jazzfest, NOLA's music festival that heralds the beginning of summer and an end to the (extremely moderated) good behavior that heralds Lenten time in Louisiana. Jazzfest time is a New Orleans holiday on par with Christmas, New Years, and Mardi Gras, the sort of big-time event that everyone begins anticipating with glazed and blissed out expressions long before it rolls around again. Sure, the music is swell and all - featuring a combination of New Orleans local music and big-ass names like Neil Young, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Bon Jovi (um) and much much more. But the primary reason people wax sentimental about Jazzfest is the food: licensed vendors sell all sorts of New Orleans foods to all sorts of people, producing the best damn way to sample the best of Lousiana's cuisine in a small and music-loving environment. Nice work if you can get it.

My dad's flight unfortunately got in late the first day of Jazzfest (boo) so we only got to spend an hour or so mussing about on Friday. Jazzfest is held at the New Orleans fair grounds and race track, and the music stages are spaced out inside the confines of the racing track. There's tons of music going on at all times, and the people watching is equally excellent: you really do get all sorts for Jazzfest. Indeed, Jazzfest is Woodstock for middle aged white people. They dress like it too: you will never see such a profusion of furry white chests and string polka dot bikinis and matching husband-wife ensembles in your life. (One man enjoys wandering about the festival in a tartan skirt above the knee, and most disquietingly, no underpants. A stiff wind kicked up while I was sitting down and enjoying some reggae, and I saw what cannot be unseen. I may require therapy.



But on to happier topics. How was the food? Here are some of the food stalls and vendors - there's a bunch of them, representing essentially every cuisine found in the city.



We tried out these fried chicken wings: pretty tasty. New Orleans has mastered, mastered the art of the fried chicken wing.

We arrived bright and early for our second day of Jazzfest- the party starts at 11 AM. Parking is a horrendous nightmare within a few miles of the fairgrounds, so we took the logical approach and hired a taxi, which dropped us off within spitting distance of the gates. We joined the scrum of people heading to the concert grounds, showed our passes and came on in.



First up: a very interesting gospel show. I rarely view people who have Got the Spirit and this was pretty refreshing - dunno what the white-face mime thing was all about but it was definitely symbolic. And you've got to appreciate the sheer wall-busting power of gospel style voices.

Lunch time came up swiftly enough. There is no lunch time at Jazzfest, of course - Jazzfest is really an excellent excuse for constant grazing. Gastric distress is another Jazzfest tradition.



Tragically, this soft shell crab po-boy wasn't very impressive: the oil had sat too long and the crab ended up rather tough and greasy.



Things looked up big-time with this quail and andouille gumbo. Great dark roux flavor, lots of tasty quail meat, and a sufficient amount of spice - what's not to like?



This lamb tagine with harissa and rice was tasty and meaty - and it's hard not to like anything with harissa on it. Not exactly traditional NOLA fare but still most tasty.



My mom was very happy with these Louisiana style hot tamales. The Tamale Man in my grandfather's native Mendon, LA, is a bit of a family legend. I'd never had them before, but I was very impressed with the flavor: they're smaller and a little more "juicy" then typical tamales, with an addictive spicy sauce and a piquant ground beef filling.

For a recipe for Louisiana style hot tamale recipes, look here: Hot Tamales And check out the annual Zwolle Hot Tamale festival in Louisiana....how deeply interesting.

More Jazzfest stuff next time....

french quarter fest, muriels, seafood boats

New Orleans has a festival problem. Within a brief time period in late April-Early May, French Quarter Fest and the two weekends of the monolithic Jazzfest are stacked up against one another. (And this all coming about two months after the Big Kahuna of Mardi Gras). This means that we New Orleans residents must once again sally forth to listen to music, eat inordinate quantities of food, and deep-fry ourselves in the ever-hotter late spring sun in the pursuit of a good time. You should feel really damn sorry for us.



French Quarter Fest takes place, not surprisingly, all over the Quarter, featuring mostly-local bands on a whole bunch of stages interspersed throughout the area. Besides the music, there's also tons of food vendors selling everything from po-boys to banh mi to African food, as well as cultural learning events and eating contests - I just missed the oyster eating contest and am still regretful. Perhaps watching what happens to someone who eats 100 oysters is a learning experience in and of itself, I cannot tell you.



I DID manage to wander around, listen to some good ragtime, jazz, and Cajun music, as well as get up next to my bon ami, my beloved, crawfish. Let me explain to you why I love crawfish so. I love Interactive Food. I define this as food that requires an inordinate amount of work for little gain - crab, Cornish game hens, lobster bits, Chinese duck, and so forth. If it has tons of little complex bones or requires special implements to eat it, I'm there.



Therefore I love crawfish, which require perhaps the most pain in the ass effort for the smallest caloric benefit of any food out there. And they really do taste delicious if done right: delicately flavored and plump tails, vying for attention with the yellow, fatty, and divine goo that lies within the crawdad's head. If you do not suck the heads, you are an infidel, or at least missing out. I do not "suck" the heads per-se, I instead dig out the goo within the heads, but the final result is the same. These were Rouse's supermarket brand crawfish and I though they were pretty good - and at seven bucks for well over a pound of big juicy ones, in addition to corn and sausage, well, not such a bad deal at all.

After the crawfish feast, I ran into my wonderful relatives from Kentucky quite randomly on Bourbon Street. I had been planning to meet them later in the evening anyway to attend my cousin's wedding party at Muriel's on Jackson Square, and it was great to run into em' all ahead of time.

Muriel's did a great job with the party. We had what Muriel's called Heavy Appetizers, which sounds somewhat dirty (well to me anyway oh don't judge me) but turned out quite delicious.



We had a cheese and fruit and pate platter.....



And an honest to god Seafood Pirouge with big old shrimp and big old oysters. Someone needs to do a sociological study of why food in boats tastes better - sushi boats, seafood pirouges, whatever. You could probably relate it to Freud and make a ton of money by evoking people's childhoods/water phobias. Just trying to give y'all good ideas.



And a whole bunch of desserts including some incredibly reputable chocolate covered strawberries...



As well as sliced prime rib with horseradish and mustard, fried turkey breast (nicely prepared), jambalaya, roasted vegetables, and various passed around snacks including coconut shrimp, prosciutto and asparagus, and some excellent crab cakes. We were upstairs in a big open space with a view of the French Quarter Fest crowds - we also, of course, had an open bar with plenty of good bourbon. We DO have Kentucky roots for God's sake, otherwise would be sacrilege, so forth and so on. Lovely evening and a lovely way to catch up with my family - I'd recommend Muriel's special events set up anytim

The restaurant is also reputed to be haunted like every other goddamn establishment in this ghost besot-city, which means you may freak out everyone else in the party by saying quietly, "Did you SEE that?" My cousin Jennifer scared the sweet Jesus out of some random gentlemen on the street - he was taking a Ghost Tour, was instructed to look in the window at Muriel's - whereupon my cousin ran to the window and yelled BOO. Bro jumped about six and a half feet and spilled his Hurricane. We're still laughing.